Emotionless

Have you heard of alexithymia?

 

Hahaha I'm the same a bit. More so when I'm a bit moody

I was in a major mood over some really annoying family shit and my sister got into a law degree and I was just like whatever. She asked if I was happy for her and I said something along the lines of 'not really, why would I be? Doesn't affect me at all and everyone else is just pretending to care because that's what is social expected'

I was really shitty so I just had to rain on her parade. It was a bit of revenge though XD

 

Growing up were you feelings valued, respected and aware of them by family or did people hurt you and not care. My wife has trouble sharing her emotions as no cared about them when she grew up or her opinion. In my upbringing emotions were a sign of weakness and no one called about what I felt. I was taught to show emotions people will see you as weak and physically hurt you. Could you share a little more

If you have Alexithymia you wouldn't have been aware or cared about how you sounded to your brother and his wife when they told you they're pregnant.

 

I'm a bit like that too, but possibly for different reasons.

I sort of grew up putting all emotions on the side to take care of whatever I needed to do, so I ended up being a little dysfunctional when it comes to interpreting emotions, showing emotions, and providing an appropriate emotional response.

I still am this way, but not as bad anymore. It took me some time off to analyze and understand emotions I had previously brushed off, and I've gained a bit more social skills as well. I can provide more appropriate emotional responses when needed, although it somewhat feels like I'm playing more of a character in a play than giving a genuine response. In reality I couldn't care less about what they said, but it's the expected behavior, so I comply to avoid problems.

It's given people the impression that I'm a cold heartless bastard with no feelings, which is not exactly true. I just don't care about how cute your dog is, sure I'll entertain the discussion because of social conventions, but I'll just cut things short and move to something more important. This doesn't apply to people who are "closer" to me however, I tend to be more "open" to topics I'd usually brush off and showing a bit more emotions in those cases. The bigger challenge is getting close to me in the first place.

 

Man! I just wish I'm like you who can hide emotions and other people won't tell the difference whether you're happy or not. I do keep my feelings when I'm upset but sometimes they can tell it through my actions which is often pissing me off cause I'm trying to hide it all yet failed to do so.

Anyhow I don't find it negative but to answer your question as to how I guess you just let go with your emotions stop holding it back, don't be afraid to show them whether they find it awkward or different at all.

 

I can relate. Growing up I was always worrying about surviving and someone saying they are having a baby wouldn't rise to the expectations of someone with a less eventful life.

 

I wouldn't exactly call it a need to survive in my case as much as it was an adaptation that made me focus more strictly on the rational rather than the emotional. It seriously made me take a step back from processing emotions because I thought of them as pointless to have, and just holding people back (myself included).

I was surrounded by funerals at a pretty young age, saw my last grandfather in his last few hours suffering from generalized cancer (his eyes had turned yellow, I can remember all of that). I saw all these family members and friends of the departed cry and all of that, yet to me that simply appeared as just the fact of life and that there is simply no reason to cry when death is expected for all of us. That has been my outlook on life and death ever since.

Little later on in life, I caught, on different occasions with different people, people I once called "friends" saying really awful things behind my back. Then I noticed other people doing the same thing behind their friend's back, and that just made me think "I don't need this nonsense" and just stepped away from "friendship" and "emotions" nonsense which started to get in the way. That surprisingly launched me into psychology and sociology, and I started manipulating people, their emotions, how they perceive me, etc. to get my way when I needed something done. The more I watched people, the more I began to see them as vile, moronic people who'd choose to remain ignorant if it meant that they'd be happier. I'd have done a great job as a Wall Street Exec.

Been living with some serious barricade around myself since then, and it's only been since just a few years ago that those barricades started becoming an inconvenience and I've been trying to take them down. My sexuality was tightly protected behind those walls as well, but I managed to take that wall down.

 

this is exactly how i feel. don't worry, you're not the only one. i can't count how many times last year where my social studies teacher had to ask me if i was ok because i gave him an emotional reply that was supposedly a bit off, even though i never thought of it. this applies to literally every adult who was once concerned with me.

it's ok, do you also feel that all the horrific things we know that happens in the world is powerful if we think about it as an idea? that's how i feel; overwhelmed by people's suffering, but when i actually am face to face with it, nothing really happens.

 

I've had a few people comment that I come across as emotionless. Truth be told, they're more or less correct. When I was a kid I would get upset easily and so learned to suppress any negative emotion. Then I slowly slid into depression, which erased the positive emotions, too. Even when good things happen to me, it's usually only a matter of time before I feel empty again. The better the circumstances, the worse the ensuing emptiness.

I still generally don't comprehend feeling emotions for other people. I get extremely uncomfortable when people show excitement about something in my life. It's like, I don't even care that much; why on earth do you? Needless to say, I'm horrible at both expressing and reading emotion in social situations.